look at him, not in the presence of her Wamphyri Lord.
'Orlea,' Maglore acknowledged her presence with a smile, indicating that she should take a seat at the table. 'Eat with us.' And, as she sat down: This is Nathan, and you shall know him well. He is new here and Runemanse is very strange to him. I shall require you to show him all of its levels, rooms, and functions. Nowhere shall be forbidden. He shall be as you are, a free person - within those limits which I impose.'
While Maglore placed some choice tidbits on a plate and passed it to her, Orlea glanced at Nathan, perhaps curiously. Then, lowering her eyes, she picked at her food.
Nathan thought it might be as well to make conversation. 'Despite my colouring,' he spoke to Orlea, 'I am Szgany. But I came here out of the west, from beyond the Great Red Waste.' Perhaps she, and Maglore too, would take it that there were other anomalies of pigmentation in those distant regions. In any case, it was an opening.
She looked at Maglore for his approval, and he nodded. And turning a little more towards Nathan, she asked: 'How is it now, on Sunside?' Her voice was soft, pleasant, but completely lacking in animation; and never a smile to betray her emotions. In fact she seemed drained of all emotion. Nathan could well understand that.
'My Sunside, in the west, or yours?'
'My own,' she answered.
'Do you miss it?' Maybe he was taking a chance. Perhaps she would also take a chance, and answer him truthfully. But she didn't, or so he believed at that time.
'No,' she said. 'My life was hard there.'
Then why do you ask after it?'
Maglore interrupted. 'Good! And so you'll converse and find things in common. But I suspect my presence inhibits you, and anyway I have things to do. Orlea, first I would speak to you ..." He stood up and moved apart; she went to him and they talked a while in lowered tones; finally Maglore left the two on their own and went about his business.
As they made an end of their meal, Nathan looked at the spread table. 'What about these things?'
'Just as you and I have our duties here, so others have theirs,' Orlea answered him. She indicated the table. 'All of this will be attended to; but for now Mag-lore has tasked me to show you Runemanse, and tasked you to observe closely and remember the things you see. No great difficulty in that; I know you will remember, just as I remembered in my time. Indeed, I cannot forget.'
He followed her to a room with a staircase, which they climbed to Runemanse's highest level. 'The topmost fang of the aerie,' she told him without looking back. 'We'll start there, and work our way down.'
'Why did you ask after Sunside?' Nathan was curious.
'Because you were making conversation,' she answered. 'If I had not answered, Maglore would have made me. He admires that such as you and I are civil towards each other. It pleases him that within the limits he imposes we govern our own bodies and minds, and that we temper ourselves and are matched on an emotional level - unlike vampires, who are commanded by powerful, alien urges to argue and fight at every opportunity, often for the sake of it!'
'Is that the only reason?' They had arrived at the topmost landing.
'No, for it was also my thought to ask ... after the children.' She waited for him to step up beside her.
The children?'
'My life on Sunside was hard,' she said, 'but I remember the little ones. They were sweet, pure, innocent.'
Nathan shrugged. 'All young things are.'
'Ah, no!' she answered with a small shudder. The young of the Wamphyri are not...'
'And are there young ones here?'
'In Runemanse? No. Maglore cannot abide them. But when I asked him once for a child, he showed me the nurseries of the Wamphyri. The children of Sunside take milk from their mothers or wet-nurses, but in Tur-gosheim . .. they take other than milk. If Maglore could be sure he would father other than a vampire, then he might give me my child, but until then he won't spoil me for the sake of "some usurper brat!'"
'You asked Maglore for a child?' Nathan couldn't believe it. 'Do you mean ... you wanted to bear his child?'
'Yes,' she answered, leading the way through a labyrinth of empty rooms to one with a window and, set back in an